Clockwork Chaos

by C. J. Henderson

  The broadsides, were another thing all together, especially in such strained political times. He tried to talk her out of the broadside jobs. After all they ended up in the gutter by day’s end. But in the past she said it was her bread-and-butter money—and she needed it to maintain a shop on the fashionable Kensington Street.

  They worked for another two hours. “That’s the last sheet,” Nathaniel said as he handed it to her.

  “Wonderful! I’m exhausted.” She inked the roller one more time, slid in the paper, and stepped on the treadle. The clamshell closed slowly and with less harummph, as if it were tired as well. Cecilia turned and leaned against the contraption. She wiped the back of her ink-stained across her forehead to erase all the indelicate signs of moisture, but only plastered more walnut dye on her face. She flung her head back and rested for a moment, her hair falling in disarray around her shoulders, the stays in her corset emphasizing her figure.

  Nathaniel thought she looked irresistible in her disheveled state. He had never dared imagine her like this. For a second she looked as enticing and as available as the women from the parlour houses, but once she spoke, the vision dissipated.

  “Can we leave the steam engine alone as it cools down?” she asked, still all business.

  He shook the vision out of mind and stood with an abrupt upright jerk as if caught. “Yes.” He hurried toward the contraption, “let me release any residual steam out of the additional pipes. The remaining vapors will rise up and out into the back alley, but this late at night with a fog rolling in from the Thames, no one should notice.”

  “That is excellent. You head on home, Nathaniel, and thank you so much. I’ll just weight press the last batch of broadsides, and we shall be ready to go tomorrow night.”

  “I will not go home and leave you alone at this time of night,” he snapped back in a commanding voice which surprised even him. “You may at times forget your station as a merchant and lady, but I shall not forget mine as a gentleman. I’ll press the last batch while you get dressed and I’ll walk you home.”

  “Fine, then, if you must,” she answered, as if she was too tired to argue. “And we shall meet back here tomorrow night after I close the shop at seven when the boys should arrive.”

  At 7:00 pm, Nathaniel, always punctual, pulled out his pocket watch, a complicated affair he’d built himself. Not only did it tell the time, but it also calculated the procession of the stars for Greenwich Mean Time. It was a mini astrolabe, partly based on Mayan technology, but also on nautical instruments. He hadn’t revealed it to many, but for all his technical intellect, he held a secret passion for astrology.

  Ten minutes later, Cecilia arrived in a rustle of voluminous skirts and heavy breathing. He heard her before he saw the white flounces of her rushed and bunched skirt swirling in the misting night air. She appeared as if dressed for some ball, not a night of high crime and political subterfuge. The collar of her white and navy jacket stood high behind her neck and head, a nod to Queen Elizabeth, but with a truly modern flounce of ruffles. It was another astonishingly bold ensemble, something she found in Paris, no doubt, what with its nautical military coloring emphasized with Parisian flair.

  She fumbled for her keys. “Sorry I’m late, none other than Mr. Wheelwright appeared at my door intent on conversation. Idiotic man. He assumes I have nothing to do.”

  “Is he a suitor? “ Nathaniel asked without thinking, not recalling the name.

  “No, he was an old colleague of my father’s. He wanted to talk scholarly books, of all things, on a night like this. It took all of my wiles and charms to dispatch him!”

  As soon as they entered, she lit two candles. “Here. She said handing him one, “be a dear and head downstairs for the newsboy pouches. I brought all the broadsides up, but completely forgot the pouches I sewed out of army surplus material. Please hurry, I want them ready for the boys.”

  Nathaniel did as she asked, once again revolted at the thought of his actions, but unable to stop himself from meeting her demands.

  No sooner had he reached the bottom of the stairs, than he felt the rush of air and heard the door slam. The lock ratcheted into place. Nathaniel ran up the stairs and tried the door. But it wouldn’t give.

  “Sorry, Nathaniel, this is for your own good,” Cecilia yelled to him through the heavy oak door. “I don’t want you implicated. I’ll come back as soon as it is over and release you. I left my neighbor a note to come and let you out in the morning if I don’t return home tonight. I’ve left a picnic basket with food and drink, even a little whiskey for your pains, and there’s a chamber pot beneath the wash basin. So sorry, my dear, but I must rush off. I promise I shall make it all up to you.”

  For a second, Nathaniel he balled his fists, intent on banging on the door, but it was no use; few people were about this time of night and Cecilia would never forgive him if the basement was discovered. He slumped against the door, sinking to the top stair in helpless despair, the only answer to his pleas the staccato of her footsteps running out the front door into the tense and noisy London night as it closed with a wooden groan.

  What to do? What to do? Halfway through considering his options, Nathaniel realized he may have created an escape route. He raced down the stairs, almost falling in his haste. “Yes, yes—This would do,” he said aloud to himself as he yanked on the large outlet pipe. It didn’t come away easily, but finally the copper broke free of the clay joint. The clay pipe broke into pieces and loose mortar fell at his feet. He could see the alley. The mist had thickened so he worked freely, digging and scrapping in the hole he’d cut open to install the steam pipe, removing the remaining mortar with his bare hands.

  The building was old, the mortar almost dust, as he remembered from first making the hole. It only took minutes before he could fit head and shoulders through the opening. He wriggled like a man being birthed from the womb of the earth and emerged just a few inches above the ground. He groveled in the muck and silt of the alley but then grabbed hold of the crates he’d stacked earlier and pulled himself up, while checking both ways to make sure he was unseen.

  He ran through the alleys, tempted to call her name, desperately racing against time. If only I can reach her in time, perhaps I can talk her out of it. Why such risk; such danger? His heart banged against his chest wall, as abrupt and regular as a piston in a steam engine, as if the organ would free itself from the flesh and fly to her more quickly than his feet.

  Stubborn woman. She’s too resolute. But isn’t that why I hold her in such high regard? And do I really want to stop her? Wouldn’t I have done so by now?

  The screech and squeal of metal wheels on rails mocked the beat of his footsteps. The massive freight train carted Ratcliff’s shop away. There is nothing I can do but remain undetected.

  He reached the intersection and headed toward the council hall. But how can I? I’m filthy: without hat, coat, or gloves. Coal grit and soot are lodged under my nails and I reek of excrement.

  With a sudden realization, he knew how the workingmen felt—in fear, demoralized right from the start because of their position at birth. They never had the chance. What Cecilia was trying to do was to stop all this and give them that chance. Nathaniel altered his course and veered toward the main square.

  I’ve got to help her. I can’t let her do this. I can’t lose her.

  As he crested the hill, the train moved, as if to challenge Nathaniel’s decisions. As large as a building, it plowed through the center of town, bellowing smoke and steam, its headlamp piercing the night with all the evil of a heavy, black Cyclops as it cut the square in half, blocking out the lights of the council hall.

  The cone of light exposed formations of uniformed militia, marching ahead of the train on the tracks, cold, orderly, and vigilant. A few waved signal flags, while many, burdened by their complex guns, kept an eye on the visitors to the square. More shadowy forms marched alongside the train. Nathaniel slowed his pace and walked in step with stragglers to the meeting.<
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  She’s the only one who knows me, who supported me in my maniacal obsessions. She’s the only one who cared, ignoring my nervous fumblings as I disrupted her shop, supporting my inventor’s dreams, searching and hunting down the very documents I needed. Who else has she done this for? What other customers does she encourage to linger in her shop day after day? And who else, in this crowded city has stepped into my workshop and been amazed?

  Nathaniel’s self-examination was interrupted by the crash of falling masonry and men screaming in pain. This side of the square was in chaos. Armed men scrambled over the rails, street urchins dodged the sweep of the grate to cross to the dark side of the square. The night was shredded, with the squeal and screech of brakes against metal, echoing agony, as desperate as a woman in childbirth. It made him shudder. What will become of her if they arrest her? Such a woman is rare. But all they will see is a dissenter, one of the underground resistance, another number to eradicate, another rebellion to squash. She’ll just vanish like her father and Cracky and her cousins. She’ll suffer who knows what harm and degradation beforehand. I must stop them, I must find her.

  The train engineer, as if oblivious its cargo was collapsing, ordered his boiler men to stoke more coal. Nathaniel knew it would allow the engine to gather a more powerful head of steam and soon the powerful engine would accelerate. He could already hear it in the whoosh of power rushing through the regulators, valves, and cylinders.

  The sounds assaulted Nathaniel’s senses. He couldn’t think. The sounds were mesmerizing, hypnotic, a summoning. Heedless of the crush, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed, Nathaniel shook himself back to his senses, allowing his wet hair to slap him in the face to wake him up. He raced ahead, his feet slipping on the slick cobblestones. He gauged the speed of the train by the movement of the side rods and took a chance.

  As militia ran in his direction, he attempted to vault over the moving coupler as if it were the pommel horse in the gymnasium, a skill his thinness and agility had helped him master. But he misjudged his weight against the target’s movement, misplaced his foot on the wet stones and slid instead of jumped. He landed hard on his pelvic bone. A few strides longer and his legs would have swung wide straddling the coupler landing him in a dangerously intimate connection with the three-inch screw head. Instead, he found himself riding the coupler side saddle, like a woman on horseback. The sound of metal grinding on oiled and sanded metal was overpowering. He was carried along a few feet, the row of gas lamps illuminating the council steps beckoned as cocky as a duelist. Militia ran ahead of his position and Nathaniel knew he had to jump before the engine accelerated even more, otherwise he’d be swept away to the scrap yard.

  Cecilia. Wait, please wait. I’m coming.

  He squeezed his eyes closed for a second. As he re-opened them he jumped in a half-fall, half-roll as he’d learned in tumbling exercises. He stood, slightly dizzy, blinded by the rain which had escalated as the train accelerated.

  A wave of umbrellas mobbed the bottom of the steps to the council hall. It was impossible to pick out faces. But as he rallied, running and searching at the same time, he could see there wasn’t a woman in sight. Cecilia wasn’t among them.

  He drew another ragged breath, pressed his hand to the pain in his side and made another last-ditch sprint toward the entranceway. The train clacked and hissed behind him, as frustrated as a Shakespearean witch losing touch with her quarry.

  “Late to the party again?” Fustin asked, stepping out from a hole in the crowd, bold as ever when noticing Nathaniel’s tardy arrival in disarray.

  “No time to exchange witticisms. Where’s Cecila?” Nathan asked over his shoulder.

  “She said she was going into the hall,” the boy yelled back.

  Nathaniel shoved his way past the men standing around the boy as he handed out broadsides.

  “What are you doing?” Fustin shouted, spun halfway ’round.

  But Nathaniel was already away. He pushed his body up the stairs as if he were Guy Fawkes intent on escape. Without stopping, he snatched the satchel with its deadly contents from the boy. Nathaniel sprinted further up the steps, knocking councilmen aside, toppling bowler hats. Halfway up the steps he saw Cecilia. He forced air into his lungs and plunged upward as if through heavy water, reaching Cecilia just as she offered a broadside to the Commissioner. Blast that audacious woman!

  With all the aplomb of a champion accepting a trophy cup, Nathaniel stepped in front of the Commissioner and accepted the paper in his place, careful to keep his fingers at the edge so as not to touch the foxglove-poisoned ink.

  “Why, thank you, my dear,” he said to Cecilia, a bit winded but audible. “I think it’s high time we made a return visit to Kew Gardens.”

  Before he could register her reaction, Nathaniel twisted on his toe.

  “And Mr. Commissioner, we would be quite delighted if you’d join us,” Nathaniel said, shoving the broadside upside down into the stunned man’s hand, allowing the rain to soak the paper. The Commissioner looked at his hand. It was stained dark walnut brown. The old man looked back up as confused as an alley cat caught in the train’s headlamp. Nathaniel returned his stare with a look of confidence, the look of a bird of prey or one of those Bombay cobras capable of hypnotizing their victims. Nathaniel waited for the poison ink to run, its tendrils as subtle and toxic as the council’s take over of London. The Commissioner balled up his hand as if ready to throw the broadside into the gutter, but Nathaniel grasped both of the man’s hands and closed them over the crumpled paper.

  “Oh but you must accompany us. I implore you,” Nathaniel said squeezing the Commissioner’s hands as ardently as an admirer, “that is, unless you are indisposed?”

  The Commissioner looked at Nathaniel with a quizzical look, unable to make sense of what happened. “We shall see, won’t we?” the politician man said. “At the moment, I have more important matters to consider.”

  Nathaniel grinned, thinking of how little importance was left in the life of the egotistical man who stood before him. Satisfied the Commissioner had been dosed with a considerable amount of the foxglove extract, Nathaniel turned. Cecilia was nowhere to be seen. He scanned those milling about.

  He was still smiling, heady with the rush of success, as he bolted down the steps carving a path through the growing crowd. Now the deed was accomplished with all the finality of Cecilia slamming the clamshell press closed, he must find the exasperating woman and impress upon her the value he could offer as her partner.

  The Curious Tale of Elizabeth Nigel

  Patricia Puckett

  The pages of the leather-bound poetry book were bone dry, and Elizabeth was grateful that the poem her mother’s guests had requested that she read was one of the shorter ones. It was impolite for a woman, especially the daughter of a fairly wealthy viscount, to lick her fingers, no matter how hard the damned pages could be to turn. Allowing her bottle-green eyes to move back and forth from the page of the book to her attentive audience, she sighed and enunciated, swayed and gestured, and—most importantly—moved every so often around the parlor room. It was the easiest way to keep the audience riveted, never mind that this was probably the sixth or seventh time that these people—her parents’ friends and fellows—had heard this particular poem. Finally, with a flourish, she concluded the poem, shutting the book closed with a snap. A round of applause from the eight people present—her mother counted amongst them—rose. She inclined her head ever-so-slightly forward.

  “Marvelous, Lady Nigel! You truly have the voice of one of God’s loveliest angels!” cried a portly man with a mustache that always made Elizabeth think of a walrus. She could not recall the man’s name.

  “Thank you, sir. But my talent comes from Tennyson’s words alone, I assure you,” she said, patting the cover of the book just before setting it on a side table.

  But the usual progression of one of Elizabeth’s mother’s salons had already begun. Her part was over. Mary Nigel, her mother, had already st
eered the conversation to the poem itself, playing the kind hostess. With a slight inclination that was unnoticeable to her guests, she gestured her daughter into the next room to send for Gerald, the Nigel family’s main indoor servant, save for the cook. Elizabeth did just that as Gerald, a man with very little of his black hair left, backed into the room, a wheeled tea tray in his grasp. Mary stood, smiling.

  “Thank you, Gerald. That will be all,” she said.

  “Ma’am,” he said, exiting just as quickly as he had entered.

  “Have you gentlemen seen this newest contraption of our glorious Nation’s scientists? Truly a practical invention,” Mary said, approaching the tea tray.

  Elizabeth tried hard to conceal her groan. Her mother was always scornful of new technologies... unless they could be put to any use that she, personally, would find “practical.” This particular tea tray, as the salon was now discussing, was enclosed on all sides, save for the top and a little door on one of the wider sides. Within the door was an abundance of heating coils and pipes that funneled water onto the coils. The water, once it had made contact, would then turn into steam, rising to the underneath of the top of the tray, thus keeping your teapot warm for whenever you should decide to take your tea. As the crowd grew around the tea tray, Elizabeth took her chance. Turning as swiftly as her heavy dress would allow, she swept from the room, mounted her home’s staircase, and stopped only when she had shut herself inside of her room. Sighing, she rested her pale forehead against the door.